Melinda Velasquez
Trainer, Speaker, Writer and Life Coach
Unveiling the Journey: From Adversity to Healing - My Memoir
After many years of fits and starts, I am now currently in the final editing phase of my first book. Writing has always been a passion of mine, and throughout my life, I felt a strong pull to write and publish a book with the purpose of helping people. Initially, I was encouraged to start with my graduate research paper, which was about adolescent female relational bullying. The paper was inspired by a horrific experience I had in the eighth grade that led to a significant amount of emotional trauma in my life. I weaved my personal experiences in with the research and data to help illustrate the real life impact. I fooled even myself for many years into thinking that my bullying experience was at the core of my emotional pain. I would later come to realize and accept that experience was just one piece of a much bigger puzzle.
My book has evolved significantly and is now a memoir about my life growing up in a family being quietly destroyed by addiction. Addiction was the dirty family secret I kept for most of my life. It was at the root of most of my childhood wounds, and it was the part of my story I was most afraid to tell. Continuing to keep our family secret was what was stopping me from writing the book I needed to write in order to truly heal. My hope is that my story will help others with similar experiences not feel so alone or afraid. Once I got clear on my book, and stopped living from the place of fear, everything else came into focus and suddenly everything I had done and experienced made sense.
Fostering Growth Through Emotional Intelligence Training
Next to writing, developing and delivering trainings has been the thing I enjoyed most throughout my career. All of the workshops I’ve created have always been based in Emotional Intelligence, topics like: self-awareness; empathy; cultural awareness; setting healthy boundaries; conflict; communication; emotional regulation; and trauma-informed care were often the focus of many of the training programs I developed. Enhancing my own Emotional Intelligence over the years was also a crucial component in my healing process; with that in mind, I made a clear intention to re-imagine my business to focus specifically on helping others develop their Emotional Intelligence in a way that helps them to feel empowered and seen.
I am a Trainer, Speaker, Writer and a Master Certified Life Coach (MCLC), with an advanced degree in Organization Development. I am a Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) Certified Practitioner, and I have a working knowledge of the Enneagram system typology. The MBTI and Enneagram are both well regarded personality type assessment tools that I use when appropriate in conjunction with my workshops and coaching practice.
My work in Organization Development guided me toward focusing on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion work, where I also spent a number of years as a Qualified Administrator working with the Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI) assessment. The bulk of my post graduate career was spent developing and delivering trauma-informed training programs for staff and caregivers while working in mental health and foster care. I have committed to designing my business model to truly be an extension of who I am, encompassing all I’ve learned and experienced. I have many tools in my toolkit, and I’m excited to share them with the world in a way that is helpful for them, while still feeling authentic to me and my core values.
